There’s life in an older dog still

The received wisdom is that the future of digital printing is all about inkjet. That was put to the test and found wanting three times last week. Fujifilm introduced its Revoria PC2120, a six-colour press that bristles with automation; HP Indigo released updates to its 7K and 15K machines; and Xeikon unveiled the Ecolyne package that will make its label presses more affordable. All might have been pushing inkjet to the fore, but have chosen instead to continue development of toner, a technology that has supposedly reached full maturity, if not the end of the development road.

Toner though can do things that inkjet as yet cannot. Six colours from Fujifilm include a gamut stretching neon green; the Indigo 7K likewise offers additional colours, something that inkjet cannot yet accomplish. For sure the colours from inkjet inks are cleaner than offset or toners so the gamut is naturally wider, but in commercial print inkjet remains a four-colour process. That will remain the case for some while. Demand for and use of inkjet is still growing, so there is no need to serve niches with additional colours beyond the ability to lay down a primer. Over time, the ability to print special colours will be introduced but not yet.

Before then will come the sorts of automation and applications of AI that now come with Fujifilm and HP Indigo presses. According to the promise, the presses can be activated by one click and will control themselves through a production run thanks to onboard scanners and sensors. That is a level of hands-free and skill-free operation that is coming thanks to the ability to collect vast amounts of data and through AI to process and make use of this. Operation is simplified, productivity increases and consistency achieves a step up. At the click of a mouse. Forget Large Language Models, the vast amounts of data needed about historical jobs and their settings mean that the AI is based on Large Operational Models.